


Tell Me How You Really Feel

by catastropheCatatonic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Anxiety, Arby's, Character(s) of Color, Depression, Drug Use, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Family Dynamics, Friendship, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, LGBTQ Jewish Character(s), LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Roommates, Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Troll Culture (Homestuck), Trolls, Trolls on Earth, panic disorder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 06:23:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18614947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catastropheCatatonic/pseuds/catastropheCatatonic
Summary: John, feeling lost and completely out of control, decides to go on a last-minute school trip with a group of students from his Latin class, much to the surprise of Rose, Jade, and Dave.  Leaving the three of them to fend for themselves in the new frontier of college, each of them encounters personal struggles that start to pull the friend group apart.When a 50s diner, a party, and a misplaced H.P. Lovecraft novel lead to a series of seemingly unrelated events, this group of college friends face new challenges and struggle to truly figure out what it means to be happy and alive.





	1. Soggy Eggs With My Arby's Girlfriend

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Here's the first chapter of my fic. I doesn't seem like much yet, but I swear I have a lot more exciting stuff planned than, like, eating breakfast and mentions of Arby's (we have the meats.) I decided to write it because I know a lot of people weren't so happy about the Homestuck epilogues, but also because I'd just kind of wanted to contribute to the fandom and this is the only way I know how to. Also, if you enjoyed the epilogues, that's totally cool, too! It just wasn't my cup of tea. To be clear, this isn't an AU of the epilogue or anything like that. It's kind of its own thing. I'll probably change the summary later because I'm doing this all pretty late at night. 
> 
> All of the statements in the summary are referring to the various different characters in the story. Lol John doesn't do all of that alone. I mean, maybe he does. I don't know what he does in his free time. 
> 
> Sorry if this fic is trash, it's my first serious attempt at Homestuck fan fiction and really fan fiction as a whole. Nice comments are always appreciated, love ya!!! :)
> 
> -catastropheCatatonic

“What the hell happened to your hair?” Rose asked as John practically collapsed into the booth next to Jade, who moved her bag in response. “You look like you got hit by a car.”

 John rubbed his eyes beneath the frames of his glasses and ruffled his hair. “I fell asleep at four in the morning.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re such an old person,” Dave laughed from across the table. “Four AM is _nothing._ I can fall asleep at six, wake up at nine, chug a Monster Energy and finish a seven-page paper by ten.”

“Is that… Is that from personal experience?” Rose responded. “Have fun dying by forty.”

“That’s the plan,” Dave joked as he leaned over and took a sip of his coffee, which was so saturated with milk that it was nearly white.

John tried to put the events that led to him falling asleep at four the morning into perspective. Or, rather, he tried to figure out exactly what happened, as it all presented itself as a blur more dreamlike than anything. He had driven Terezi Pyrope, a blind Troll girl from his Journalism class, to an Arby’s several miles south for a late dinner during a bout of spontaneity. He remembered her ordering two ginger ales and drinking them herself with two straws all at once, which at the time had been slightly more than unsettling.

Maybe that was also part of some bizarre fever dream. Even so, John had woken up after two hours of sleep in a cold sweat, his arms spread across his bed and his neck in a knot.

“I ordered you eggs,” Jade told him as she ripped the Sweet & Low sugar packets into her black coffee one by one. “It was that or, like, pancakes, and I remembered your baked-good aversion just in time.”

“ _Thanks,_ ” John yawned, his eyes watering with exhaustion.

“What happened with you last night?” Dave questioned as if he knew the answer. “I heard you and that blind girl hit the road around nine?”

John blinked twice in rapid succession and furrowed his brow. “Yeah.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you got back at four AM,” Dave pointed out.

“We were just hanging out,” John responded in all honesty. “I think I ended up staying out later than her.”

 “Was it, like, a _date_?” Dave asked him with a slight smirk. His smile was always turned slightly upward towards his left, for some reason, while the other half of his mouth was frozen. He had done it for as long as John could remember, and he always just assumed it was one attempt of many to turn himself into the ultimate fuckboy. Granted, he was a ‘fuckboy’ without the actual ‘fuck,’ which kind of defeated the purpose of all those track pants and bootleg _Supreme_ stickers.

He was deliberately expressing reservations about his night not because there was anything particularly scandalous about it, but because Dave _always_ did this. He liked to make things a bigger deal than they were as if he were still a middle school boy with nothing better to do but tease his less than socially-inclined friend about his most recent adventures with a person of the opposite sex.

“We’re just friends,” John explained. “She wanted a crispy chicken sandwich.”

A grey-skinned woman with flowing, jet-black hair and crimson red lips came by in a hurry and passed each person at the table their respective plate, apart from Jade and Rose, who switched with one another. Without saying a word, the woman eyed John for a moment before hastily walking away. He, for a moment, thought he knew her, but then he decided that she was just a stranger.

“ _Just friends,_ ” Dave whispered in a high-pitched, sing-songy voice that made John’s skin crawl.

“Eat your damn toast,” John answered without meeting his shaded glance while cutting into some scrambled eggs with a knife and fork.

There was a moment of silence between all four of them as they cut into their respective dishes, some more viciously than others. Jade didn’t even use a knife. She just took her fork and stabbed it into the massive buttermilk pancake, dipping it in a pool of maple syrup that she had poured on her plate and bit off pieces from around the edges. Rose, however, was extremely careful with how she cut her omelet, holding one part of the outer layer down with a fork and cutting with a knife.

The conversation picked back up when Dave commented on the way Jade was eating her pancake, which sparked a debate on the validity of eating certain foods without cutting them. John was, as usual when it came to this kind of conversation, completely indifferent. He didn’t comment on it and stuck to his plain scrambled eggs, watching his friends laugh and playfully tease one another. At the moment, he was more focused on how exhausted he was. He never knew how some people were able to go to sleep at dawn and wake up feeling perfectly fine two hours later, but everyone else around him managed to pull it off.

Even when he went to sleep at a reasonable hour, he felt tired as shit. It felt like some kind of curse that he was unable to shake, restricting him and pulling him under with every day that went by. Then again, maybe he was just lazy.

“I’ve gotta get to my first class,” Dave announced, grabbing his bag from under the table and slinging it over his right shoulder as he slid his legs over the side of the booth. “Here’s my share.” Dave placed a crumpled ten-dollar bill at the edge of the table and stood up, nearly colliding with the red-lipped server from before. “Shit, sorry,” he told her, but she did not respond.

“I should probably get going, too,” Jade told them.

“Your first class isn’t until twelve, though,” Rose protested, jokingly pouting her coal-black lips like a disappointed child. “Hang out with us.”

“I have to water all my plants before European History,” Jade explains. “It’s a very _delicate_ procedure.”

“No, I know. Go water your plants,” Rose told her as John got up to let Jade out of the booth. “My first class is at ten, anyway.”

As Jade followed in Dave’s footsteps, she handed Rose ten dollars for the food, just as he had. Rose and John sat back down and waited for the crimson-lipped girl to return.

“Okay, be honest,” Rose began out of the blue, “is this girl _really_ just your friend?”

John felt himself blushing pink against the tan hue of his skin. He looked away for a second, not because her assumption was correct, but because the very idea of him actually being with a girl was so commonly ridiculed by his friends and by himself. “Yeah, I swear.”

“Maybe she is, but do you _like her_ as more than a friend?” Rose leaned in to ask.

“All we did was go to Arby’s,” John reminded her. “That’s literally the least romantic restaurant in the Massachusetts area.”

“Next thing you know, she’ll be driving you to _Denny’s_ instead, and you’ll be sharing a plate of soggy eggs,” Rose laughed.

“She won’t be driving me _anywhere,_ Rose, she’s blind,” John reminded her.

Their conversation was interrupted by the Troll girl who placed a paper check on the table. “Here’s your check,” she said. “Where’d the others go?”

“Oh, they left,” John answered. Swallowing his embarrassment and anxiety, he asked the girl, “I’m sure you get this a lot but do I know you from somewhere? You look very familiar.”

“Huh? I don’t know. Are you in my Forensics class or, like, Advanced Latin?” She questioned. “Were you the kid who threw the paper ball in the waste bin from across the lecture hall?”

“ _Oh!_ ” John almost exclaimed. “That’s where I know you from! Latin!”

The girl half-smiled. “You’re quite the baller.”

“Well, uh, that wasn’t me,” John admitted. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

There was an awkward silence between the two as Rose signed the check and handed the girl $35 for their breakfast, along with a tip of $7. “Thanks,” she answered. “I’ll see you in Latin, I guess.”

With that, the girl walked away, and Rose snickered under her breath.

“What?” John asked, afraid of the answer.

“You’re certainly pretty smooth with the ladies,” Rose told him jokingly. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Come on, Rose, you can’t be serious,” John answered with a sigh. “Why is it so shocking every time I talk to a female?”

“Please don’t turn into one of those guys that say _female_ instead of _girl_ or _woman,_ ” Rose fake gagged in response to his use of strangely formal terminology. “And it’s not shocking, it’s just… I don’t know.”

“You _definitely_ know,” John pried.

“You’re kind of a nerd,” Rose confessed. “Maybe girls are into that now, or something.”

John and Rose began their trek through the roads of their college campus after their more than awkward conversation had come to a halt. John was too busy wondering if he really was a nerd to focus on what Rose was telling him as they walked, which she only realized when he started to visibly drift off into thought and stare aimlessly into the distance.

“Hey, ladies’ man, I’m trying to tell you about the party Jade and I went to last week,” Rose told him, trying to pull him out of his haze. “It was the whole deal, man, sex, drugs, and Lil Pump.”

“I don’t think your conscience would ever let you smoke weed,” John joked.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t seem to mind if I hit a mango Juul,” Rose confessed.

“ _Disgusting._ Have fun with popcorn lung,” John answered.

“Unrelated, but are you going to be in Creative Fiction?” Rose asked him. She seemed oddly apprehensive about this class despite her fiction-writing abilities. John had suspected that she disliked this class because of the professor, who had a habit of challenging many of Rose’s ideas throughout the lecture. If there was one thing John knew about Rose, it was that she liked to be right.

“Yeah,” John answered. “Is that piece due today?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Rose answered. “While you were out gallivanting at an Arby’s with your new girlfriend, I spent my night finishing the fucking thing last minute.”

“I’ll see you there, then,” John told her.

“You too,” Rose answered. “Tell your Arby’s girlfriend I say hi."


	2. Jessica, If That Even Is Her Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave tries to flirt with a girl in his Music Theory class.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdy!!! Here's chapter 2. From now on, I'll update this particular fic on Saturdays, giving me a week to finish each chapter, so they could be kind of long in the future. In this chapter, Dave is literally such a douche, but I swear he has character development. I promise.
> 
> Nice comments are appreciated! I love you :D

Dave had his phone rested on the left page of his doodle-filled spiral notebook and open to Snapchat, tuning out everything the Professor had to say. She was going on about something regarding “emotion” and “deliberateness,” but that was all Dave got from the moment he accidentally zoned- _in_ to class.

All he really wanted to do was make his own damn music. He didn’t care at all about “deliberateness,” or whatever when it came down to it. Dave’s music process was just kind of writing things down, seeing what works, and then repeating. He never used what the Professor called “personal leitmotifs” or took the time to make every note and sound “deliberate,” and yet the things he made still turned out okay. It kind of made him think that all of this “Music Theory” stuff was nothing but total BS.

Someone was texting Dave at the moment. It was a girl whose name he didn’t know and did care to learn. He was almost 90% sure that they had met at a party, or maybe at a friend’s dorm, but he couldn’t quite figure out what her name was or why she was still bothering to text him.

 It took him longer than he cared to admit to figure out why she was sending him tasteful selfies from inside what seemed to be a public bathroom, complete with a confused elderly stranger in the background staring directly into the camera as the girl made a duck face and stuck her ass out. This was that girl he met at that party organized by that theater major guy with the clown face paint, probably named _Jessica,_ that he snuck away with when Miracles starting playing for the fifth time and no one could locate the phone it was playing from.

 _Funny,_ he thought to himself as he looked at her picture, _I thought she was a blonde._

“For your final projects before Thanksgiving Break, I expect _all of you_ to take what I’m saying to heart. You don’t want to just throw shit into the world knowing it’s terrible. At least try,” the Professor told the class. Slight snickers were coming from within the lecture hall’s seats, but no one commented on what the Professor had said. “Some asshole last year decided to turn in a poorly-made Garage Band remix of Gold Digger by Kanye West and thought he would get away with it. I swear I saw him working at Wendy’s the other day.”

At this point, even Dave had to stifle a laugh. She was just _going off_ at this point, talking about some kid with a lot of talent but no will to work. To be honest, this story was probably made up just to scare some sense into this raggedy group of dumbass kids, but all it was doing was encouraging their ridiculousness. Dave was sure that at least two kids would turn in their own variations of Gold Digger by the end of the week, and he couldn’t promise that one of them wouldn’t be him.

All of a sudden, Dave heard the doors at the back of the lecture hall slam open and hit the concrete walls behind them. There was silence throughout the classroom, and no one dared to speak as a familiar young woman with long, flowing black hair and cherry-red lipstick rushed down the steps, all while untying an apron around her waist.

“Miss Megido, that’s the fourth time this month you’ve been late to my class,” the Professor reminded her as she nearly tripped on the toe of her own shoe. “Please find a seat. Quickly.”

The girl looked around frantically for several breathless moments, searching for an open seat. Dave watched as she spotted one at the front of the classroom right next to where she usually sat, but the human girl sitting beside it moved her backpack to the seat she was eyeing. Defeated, the girl sighed loudly and turned her head.

She slid past several students on her way to the empty chair beside Dave, where she quickly sat and dropped her opened backpack right beside her. “Hey.” She said to him. Dave switched away from Snapchat and glanced over at the girl, who was now opening her notebook and flipping through the pages. “What did I miss?”

“Huh? Oh, just some stuff about our projects,” Dave explained to her as the Professor droned on about something new, complete with stories of terrible projects and various morally ambiguous tales of woe regarding Kanye West remixes being turned in for credit.

“What are you doing for yours?” The girl asked. Dave still hadn’t gotten her name.

“What do you mean?” Dave asked her. “I’m making music.”

“What’s your genre? Your _sound_?” She asked again.

“Aren’t you a forensics major? Why do you care so much about this class, and what I’m doing in it?” Dave responded, sounding slightly more hostile than he intended. It was more a question of honest curiosity than annoyance.

“Corpses and music go great together,” the girl responded. “Haven’t you ever seen _Nightmare Before Christmas_? Or _Hamilton_?”

“ _Hamilton_ isn’t about corpses,” Dave chuckled to himself as he opened up Netflix on his cellphone.

“I wasn’t aware someone raised the Founding Fathers from the dead?” The girl joked. “Unless that’s the case, it’s absolutely about corpses.”

Dave sighed before looking right at the girl for a moment. “Jesus Christ, you’re morbid.” He leaned over onto his balled fist, watching as she wrote something down in her red notebook. “Is that why you want to finger dead people for your future job?”

The girl made a fake gagging noise. “That’s not what forensics is!” She whisper-shouted.

“I’ve seen _Always Sunny_ ,” Dave told her. “I know what happens behind closed doors.”

The girl didn’t say anything for a while before she finally said, “Alright. I’ve waited on you and your friend with the glasses, and you’ve made me aware of what you think of my major all within one day of knowing me. I think I deserve your name.”

 _Tell her your name is Harry Balls or some clever shit like that._ “Dave.” _You’re a fucking idiot._

“Aradia,” the girl answered. “You definitely look like a ‘Dave.’”

“What does a ‘Dave’ look like?” Dave asked her. “Average-height, lanky white guy that wears sunglasses indoors?”

“You just described a serial killer,” Aradia informed him. “I was thinking more of ‘douche-chic.’”

“I guess I do indulge in douchie-couture,” Dave said. He didn’t know what to say next. Internally, he knew he could easily get Aradia’s number and call her up next time he was bored or not quite in the mood to do any actual school work. He would probably forget her name despite it being in her contact information, which was fairly typical for him, and he was fine with that. Jessica was too talkative, anyways. Or maybe that was someone else?

“If you need any help with your project,” Dave began, giving Aradia a sly smile, “I could help you out.”

Aradia smiled again. Dave was almost sure he was doing _something_ right.

“I’m having a party at my sister’s apartment while she’s away if you want to come,” Aradia asked. That wasn’t quite the question Dave had expected, but it was good enough. “You can bring your friends from the diner if you want. It starts at eight. I’ll give you the address if you’re interested.”

“I might be,” Dave answered with a slight eyebrow raise.

“It’s settled, then,” Aradia answered as she began to scribble something on a piece of notebook paper. She messily ripped it out and handed it to Dave, who took it and read it over like it was the most interesting piece of literature in the world. “I’ll see you there.”

“Yeah,” Dave responded. “I guess you will.”


	3. Someone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose is a sweaty lesbian and apparently Jade does yoga and dabbles in solitaire. Dave has terrible taste in beer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey Gamers! From now on, this fic is going to update on Saturdays probably during the early AMs. The chapter after this is when shit starts to get real wild. This is my first time using the Homestuck skin in AO3 so pardon me if I got anything wrong. I'm learning :)

It was just after her first class when Rose felt the phone in her pocket hum. Mostly expecting it to be John, Rose dug reached for the pink cellphone that was hanging out of the right pocket of her high-waisted jeans. She stopped walking down the hall and leaned on the white brick wall, opening up her phone with a simple tap of the screen.

 

turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT]

 

TG: how much money do you owe me

 

Rose wanted to sigh when she saw that text hanging unnoticed on the lock screen of her phone. For fuck’s sake, his first class had just ended, and he was already texting her this shit like some kind of asshole?

Nonetheless, she responded.

 

TT: I don’t owe you any money, to my knowledge

TG: you absolutely owe me money

TG: from hanukkah three years ago

TG: i let you borrow twenty three dollars

TT: What are you getting at?

 

Rose waited idly for his response. In all honesty, she didn’t quite care enough to spend another second doing so. With an eye-roll and a scoff, Rose closed out the Pesterchum tab and pushed herself from the bricks. With a bag over her shoulder and notebook and novel hugged close to her chest, Rose continued down the hall as the only indication that there had ever been a class in this building.

She was starting to think that taking French in the morning was a less than ideal situation, as it seemed to mess her up for the rest of the day. Contrary to what the quirky coming-of-age novels and Netflix Originals will tell you, bilingual people don’t ‘mess up’ in conversation and start speaking another language for no reason. It’s more that they’ll think in the language they most recently spoke, which in Rose’s case was French, and so then they have to shut it off while reemerging into their native language.

Every once in a while, Rose _would_ actually slip up and say something simple like _merci_ rather than _thanks_ , but it was merely because she couldn’t shut that part of her brain off. This was especially true in the morning, as she had barely spoken any English before she went to French.

As she mused on the practicality of her schedule, she felt her cellphone buzz again. She opened it up again, and it was still just Dave.

 

TG: i need like thirty dollars

TT: I can give you ten

TG: please i need liquor

 

Rose blinked twice and nearly laughed.

 

TT: Jesus Christ, David

TG: it’s not what it looks like it’s for a party

TT: What are you trying to buy with thirty dollars? Red wine?

TG: no just a shit ton of bud light

TT: Why

TG: or like corona

TT: David why are you buying so much bud light

TG: maybe miller lite

TT: David, please

TG: get some sam adams up in this bitch

TT: David you have nowhere to throw a party.

TG: it’s not my party i was invited to one at someone’s apartment

TG: im just a nice person

TT: Not if you’re bringing Bud Light.

TT: I’m not giving you thirty dollars to buy trash beer. You have your own money, please use it.

TG:  please remember hanukkah2015

TT: No.

TG: please rose i got you an itunes gift card

TT: Which you used half of

TG: that was before spotify please rose

TT: I’m not giving you money for beer. If you really want to buy that stuff, use your own money, or ask John. He might lend you some.

TG: youre such a bad sister oh my god

TG: if i was dying and the doctor asked for thirty bucks would you just be like no he’s a trash beer

TT: Are you already drunk or something?

TG: im just high on life babeey

TT: Please cease to exist.

TG: im working on it

 

Rose turned her phone off for good right then and there, this simply closing the tab, opening up ‘Music,’ and continuing her journey down the long hallway. She reckoned that she would text him back when she returned to her dorm, but for now, all she wanted was some pure peace and quiet. Or, rather, she wanted to listen to music in peace.

Rose plugged her earbuds into the headphone jack of her phone and scrolled through her music library for quite some time, searching for the perfect song that would give her enough motivation to make the full walk back to her dorm. The second she found the perfect song, which happened to be _Nobody_ by a singer named Mitski, Dave sent her another text.

 

TG: you can come if you want

 

Rose was walking now. It was as if she were walking away from Dave, although he wasn’t there. She wasn’t walking away from anything at all.

She descended down the stairs that led to a small hallway ending with two blue doors, which she gladly went out and into the mid-October air. It was still relatively warm, although the winds were tinged with oncoming winter that bit Rose’s cheeks and reddened her nose when it blew in her face.

One might say that her treatment of Dave was incredibly cold and unkind, but it wasn’t without reason. After their parents got divorced when they were both 15, Dave began slowly abandoning reason and operating upon his own initiative. He started leaving his friends behind to drink with the kids that Rose knew were bad news, or to hang out with some girl that he barely knew. He stole one of those E-Cigarette things from a convenience store and smoked behind the school until he smelled vaguely of synthetic mango, laughing and making hollow jokes with those kids.

The thing Rose had noticed the most, though, was that her brother stopped smiling. Well, maybe that was a hyperbole. He smiled at those kids and smiled at the girls he was trying to court, but he didn’t smile in private. His stare would be a million miles long, going into the distance without meeting anyone else’s glance. Rose recalled hearing him talking to someone late at night when they were kids. She had assumed he was on the phone with John or playing video games online with his friends, but he wasn’t. He would say things like “why would you do this?” and “you’re a fucking idiot, do you know that?”

Those were the kinds of things no one would say to anyone but themselves. Or, maybe they would, but not Dave. He did that every single night unless someone was sleeping over, and even then, he would sometimes sneak away just to talk and stare into the silence. Rose sometimes wondered if he still did it now even when John was his roommate.

Campus had, at least at the beginning of the year, seemed huge to Rose. It was so strange to her to just see people walking around with their backpacks and books as if they were in high school, but instead of going to class they would just sit down on the unnaturally green grass under a tree and stay there for hours. Rose remembered how Dave once sat down for hours playing his acoustic guitar trying to attract random girls who would see him as ‘sensitive’ and ‘emotionally aware.’

From Rose’s experience, Dave was neither of those things. Rose knew he was in pain, and that he had been for the past four years. Everyone in their family was. But instead of coping with his issues by yelling like their father or obsessively drinking like their brother, he just ignored his emotional distress altogether and decided to act like a total bitch.

Rose’s dorm house was beside the massive library that she still owed five books to from September. It was slightly smaller than the others, but there was a certain kinship that came with there only being three floors in the building, unlike some of the other ones that had five or six. She was on the second floor and shared a dorm with Jade, who was a decent (albeit early-rising) roommate. She was courteous of Rose even when she arose early in the morning to meditate or do yoga, and rarely disturbed her. Rose, however, was the direct opposite. She was quite the night-owl, staying up until midnight almost every night doing nothing but listening to music or a podcast and reading a good book. That was the life she imagined for herself as a high schooler when she was too exhausted to do anything but lay in bed and watch YouTube, and that was the life she decided to have.

Upon entering the dorm, Rose noticed that several young women were relaxing in the common room, including that art major girl who dressed like she was the product of an unholy union between a lumberjack and a pirate. She was lying slouched between a couch cushion and the actual couch with one foot leaning on the coffee table and the other positioned over her knee. She appeared to be furiously texting, as her face was twisted in an expression of disapproval.

Beside her was… Someone else.

 _Oh god, oh fuck,_ Rose thought to herself, suddenly speeding up as her cheeks burned bright red. _Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck._

Just as she was thinking about how hilarious and unfortunate it would be if she dropped her notebook and her novel, Rose missed the first step of the stairs and ended up falling forward. When she heard the objects she was carrying fall right onto the carpeted floor, she felt like a total dumbass. _Good job with that foreshadowing,_ Rose thought, _Professor Mindfang is always trying to tell you to use that more in your writing._

“Oh dear,” _someone_ said, rising from her seat on the couch and kneeling down to pick up Rose’s books, “are you alright?”

Rose couldn’t look at her straight. “What? I’m fine. I just… Maybe my shoes are untied. Are they?” Rose looked down, and alas, no they were not. There was no excuse for tripping on her own damn feet other than she was just as clumsy as the protagonist in some mildly disturbing porn novel. “I’m a mess, I’m sorry.”

That seemed like an even _worse_ thing to say, but it was already out there in the open. In Rose’s mind, she very briefly thought to herself, _now would be a great time to go back to my last save file and redo this whole quest,_ but she had to remind herself that this wasn’t some RPG where she could just ‘go back’ when she did something wrong.

“Please don’t worry about it,” the girl told her gently, holding Rose’s books under her left arm and reaching out her other. “You’d be surprised. This happens to me all the time.”

 _No, it doesn’t,_ Rose wanted to say.

“Hey, Kanaya,” Vriska called from the couch without looking up.

“Could you give me a moment, Vriska? This poor girl just fell,” _someone_ answered. Rose looked at her outstretched hand just hanging there in the open and wondered what it would mean if she just took it. Would they share some kind of moment? Would it be just like those God-awful (but secretly kind of cute) movies?

Rose didn’t want to risk looking like even more of an idiot than she already did, so she took _someone’s_ hand and allowed her to pull her up. She was surprisingly strong, despite looking so femme. _That’s a gross over-generalization,_ Rose reminded herself. She had to do that sometimes when it came to stuff like this.

 _Someone_ handed Rose her books and then turn her head to look at Vriska, who immediately said, “you know Aradia?”

 _Someone_ nodded in response.

Rose thought that she should probably leave, but something was gluing her to the floor, and it seemed that the longer she stayed there, the deeper she had sunk in.

“She’s having a party at her sister’s apartment tonight at eight. Want to come with Terezi and me?” Vriska asked.

“Oh, I would be absolutely honored to third-wheel your date,” _someone_ answered.

Rose felt her heart sink to her toes. Without saying anything, she forced herself up the stairs. Her cheeks were burning almost uncomfortably, leaving her feeling more than a little nauseous. _Maybe it’s a coincidence,_ Rose tried to tell herself as she ascended up the second flight of stairs, _maybe Dave’s going to a different party._

Rose unlocked her door and practically ran in, locking it behind her as if she were being chased. Jade was in there at the moment playing Solitaire on her bed, and she appeared to be winning.

“What happened? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Jade commented.

“We’re going to a party tonight,” Rose told her, “it’s at eight. I… Don’t think I have anything to wear.”


	4. Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jade and Rose get ready for a party. John decides on whether or not he should go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I’m just now adding the Notes because I posted this at some ungodly hour and then went to sleep.
> 
> Thanks for reading!!
> 
> Comments and Kudos are much appreciated ❤️

“I have a blouse you can borrow,” Jade told Rose, swinging her legs over the side of her bed and standing. “It has flowers on it. I thought they were bees when I bought it.”

“No, I mean… Like, I have stuff I can wear, I just don’t know what I _should_ wear. Not to a party, at least.” Rose answered.

Jade raised a dark eyebrow. “You wore tights and a skirt to that party we went to a while back,” she explained, “why can’t you wear that now?”

Rose huffed out a sigh and crossed her arms over her chest. “ _Jade_ ,” she tried to explain without saying anything directly.

“What? Is the Pope going to be there or something?” Jade laughed. “Why are you so worried about dressing nicely? It’s a party, just wear whatever feels right.”

Rose didn’t want to talk about it. Whenever she thought about tripping and falling over her own feet or being helped up by Kanaya, her pale cheeks burned bright red, and her stomach churned with shame. Jade told her everything, no matter how personal, but Rose could not say the same for herself. She didn’t talk about her _love life,_ or rather lack thereof, and wished to keep it that way.

“Oh,” Jade responded in a teasing, sing-songy voice. “It’s because of a _girl._ ”

“Shut up,” Rose answered, lowering her binder onto her bed and walking over to the small wardrobe that she shared with Jade. If a friend, or even a stranger, were to take a look into their closet, they would be able to tell in a second which side was whose. Rose, who had claimed the left side as her own, owned mostly pastel sweaters, black skirts, boots, and tights, while Jade unironically owned cat shirts, light-up socks, and bright blue sneakers that looked like they came straight out of a cartoon. Not that Rose was judging, per se, but there indeed was a stark difference in their wardrobe.

Rose slide the closet hanger across the rod as she searched for something to wear.

“You don’t have to lie,” Jade told her, “I understand. You want to impress her.”

Rose pulled a rose-gold knit sweater from the closet and held it over her chest, stepping over to the bathroom door and looking into the mirror. “I don’t want to impress her,” Rose explained. “I just want to see her again.”

Jade snickered once and grabbed one of the hangers from the closet before handing it to Jade. “What about this?”

The hanger she had handed Rose held a pink skirt that faded into purple, which she rarely wore, except when it was the only thing she hadn’t washed. “Or, you could wear those ripped jeans. They make you look like a skater. Girls love that.”

“That’s not really me, though,” Rose admitted. “I mean, who knows? Maybe she’s into that. I just don’t want to feel like I’m wearing a costume.”

“Then, _like I’ve been telling you,_ just wear that skirt and sweater. Add those tights with the stars on them, and I think you’re in business.” Jade explained. “When you talk to her, I guarantee you she won’t be too focused on what you’re wearing.”

Rose paused for a moment. “I don’t think I’m gonna talk to her.”

Jade pursed her lips and furrowed her brow. “You can’t be serious,” she insisted. “You’re stressing about what to wear, but you won’t even talk to her? Not even to offer her a drink or something?”

“Jade, I’m serious,” Rose went on, this time in a harsher tone. Dull feelings of shame and resentment filled the hole in her chest that she forgot had been there in the first place. When all of those feelings came back up and filled that cavity to the brim, she realized that she would have to tread carefully, or else it would all spill out. “I don’t want to talk about it. I just need something to wear and someone to go with.”

Jade shrugged and flopped down on her bed. The cards that had been neatly sorted across the comforter flew up and slid off the bed, piling below her dangling feet. “What’s her name?”

Rose had locked herself in the bathroom with the sweater, skirt, and a pair of tights before she could respond. There was something in the slam of the door that told Jade she had crossed a boundary, but to her, the boundaries Rose kept in place were restrictive and irritating. She didn’t want to talk about who she liked, or about her family, or even about her classes. Jade could still talk about all this stuff with Dave, but it wasn’t the same.

Jade and Rose chose each other as roommates last year after having been friends from summer camp years prior. The two of them maintained an online friendship, mostly through instant messaging and emailing, and Jade frequently worried that their relationship had suffered because of it. Rose lived in New York, Jade lived in Hawaii, and the two of them had slowly lost contact with one another from Sophomore year until Junior year of High School.

Jade remembered bits and pieces of what happened. Rose’s parents got divorced when she was 15 years old, and at the time she acted like it was nothing. It wasn’t until a messy custody battle and later, months of moving between two different households that Rose’s mental health began to deteriorate.

She always complained about how ‘everything sucked’ when they talked on the phone, and Jade tried her best to distract her. She tried talking about books or movies or school, but Rose has stopped talking about those things long ago. Pretty soon, Rose stopped picking up the phone. She stopped texting her back. She didn’t even send her a birthday card for two years.

Jade wanted to talk to her about it mostly because she just needed to know what happened. She knew about the divorce and about the custody battle, but the rest was a complete mystery to her. Sure, every once in a while, Rose made an offhand comment about hating high school or about how “kids suck,” but that was it. Jade knew she wasn’t allowed to ask her to elaborate.

“How do I look?” Rose asked as she opened the door. Her whole outfit was different shades of pink and purple apart from the black boots that completed it. “I feel like a sunset threw up on me.”

Jade stood again, tilting her head and squinting as she evaluated the pastel outfit. “Nice.”

 

“What’s up, nerd?” Terezi rasped as she sat down next to John. “Or, as the Romans would say, _pullum glacies plaustra_.”

“Terezi, that means ‘chicken ice wagon,’” Jon reminded her.

“Cool,” she responded. The lecture hall was almost full at this point, per usual, but the Professor had yet to show up. “I can’t read, so…”

“You can read Braille, though, right?” Jon asked, leaning on his hand, which was balled into a fist. “Don’t you have Braille textbooks or something?”

“Audiobooks, yeah,” Terezi answered. “But I like to let people think I don’t.”

“Why?” Jon laughed.

“It makes for a good excuse when I say shit like ‘chicken ice wagon,’” Terezi explained. “I’m really only taking this class because I wanted to learn how to understand and read the language from that place that Assassin’s Creed is based on.”

“You mean Rome?” John laughed.

“ _No_ , I mean the place Assassin’s Creed is based on,” Terezi told him.

John watched as Aradia pushed the doors of the lecture hall open holding a book up to her nose, looking quite entranced in its contents. She took her seat right beside that Troll girl with all the necklaces, which was where she usually sat and put her book down soon after.

“Are you going on the Rome trip?” Terezi asked him. “I’ve played Assassin’s Creed enough times to know my way around the goddamn place.”

“What is it with you and Assassin’s Creed today?” John joked as his answer.

“I’ve been dabbling in good old Ass Ass Tity as of late,” Terezi answered, and John has no clue what she meant. “Thinking of doing a livestream with my girlfriend.”

“ _Ass Ass Tity?_ ” John questioned.

“Assassin’s Creed Unity,” Terezi explained. “Have you been living under a fucking rock, man?”

Before John could answer, his phone buzzed loudly in his sweatshirt pocket. He was leaning against the long desk in front of him that stretched across the length of the row, causing the vibrations of his cellphone to connect with the maple wood and cause quite a stir among those sitting near him. “Sorry,” he muttered, pulling his phone from his pocket.

 

TG: hey ducks

 

 _God fucking dammit,_ John thought to himself for just a moment.

 

TG: *fuckers

TG: sorry

 

Jade had so far been the only one to respond.

 

GG: i heard about the party!

GG: rose and i are coming :)

TG: nice

TG: john

TG: buddy

TG: love of my life but in a bro way

 

John finally worked up the energy to answer.

 

GG: you being nice to another guy doesn’t imply that you’re gay, dave, this is 2018

EB: what?

TG: i need thirty dollars to buy beer for a party

TT: Jesus Christ Dave, at least invite him.

TG: john want to come to a party with me

EB: no

TG: see

EB: i’ll lend you the money though

EB: please pay me back

GG: john! you should come :(

EB: i need to study for a test in biology

TG: haha

TG: nerd

GG: you’ll have fun!

EB: i’m not really a party guy

EB: i get a little nervous in crowds

TG: you’ll be like my emotional support incel

GG: dave

TT: He doesn’t have to come if he doesn’t want to.

TG: terezi is probably gonna be there

 

John thought about it for a moment. He looked at Terezi, who had one earbud in and seemed to be listening to a podcast on full volume and then back down at his phone.

 

EB: how do you know

TG: haha you have a crush

EB: no i don’t

GG: it’s okay if you do!

EB: ew no she’s like a weird cousin to me

TG: where i’m from that’s just another word for girlfriend

TT: Please kindly fuck off.

GG: i’ve never met this girl, i’m so excited to meet her :)

EB: i already said i’m not going

TG: please

EB: dave i’m tired

TG: you said you were studying

TT: Dave, leave him alone.

TG: i’ll do literally anything

TG: minus

TG: like

TG: vore

TT: What kind of curse befell my previous incarnations for you to be my brother?

 

John took a deep breath.        

 

EB: what time is the party


	5. Damara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Scooby Gang go to a party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I’m adding these Notes retroactively because I forgot to write them when this was posted. 
> 
> Thank you guys so much for dealing with my ramblings!!! I hope you like this chapter.

“How do I look?” Dave asked, standing outside with John when Rose and Jade left their dorm house. He did a spin as if he were some kind of ultra-handsome model showing off a Gucci belt.

“Oh, you’ll be absolutely _drowning_ in pussy,” Rose joked.

Dave was wearing a white t-shirt and ripped black jeans, which was basically what he wore every day, but today he opted for a pair of red sneakers instead of those worn-out checkered Vans he always had on. He was rocking the ‘sunglasses at night’ look, per usual.

“I’ll drive, I guess,” John said, his hands buried deep into his pockets as he slouched over. It was already 7:30, which was around the time that John usually thought to himself, _I should be getting to bed,_ although he’d stay up for another four hours chest-deep in a pool of self-loathing and Netflix.  “On the way, we’ll stop at the packy, and I’ll buy the beer.”

“What the fuck is a packy?” Dave asked as the group began walking along the asphalt.

“You know, like a packy,” John tried to explain. “A liquor store.”

“What the _fuck_?” Dave continued.

“Have you never been to Massachusetts before now?” John questioned. “No one calls them liquor stores. Don’t you have things like that in Texas or New York, where everyone calls them one thing, but you call them another?”

“This new-fangled Yankee vocab really yees my haw,” Dave answered in a half-assed Southern accent.

The walk to the parking garage was long, and for John, mostly silent. He didn’t say much as Dave and Jade traded Borat impressions and jokingly poked fun at how pink Rose’s pale cheeks were, walking with his hands buried in the pockets of his blue hoodie and his feet dragging lifelessly behind him.

Rose was clutching a book in her hands, which seemed like an odd thing to bring to a party, but it was Rose, so John didn’t question it.

The Massachusetts air was still warm with the faint remnants of summer blowing in the wind like fallen leaves, but no one seemed to care. Everyone around them was wearing sweatshirts and jeans instead of t-shirts and shorts like everyone had been wearing less than a week ago. The October lifestyle was rubbing off on even the most insistent summer fools, making their blood of any color run shades of orange, red, and brown with Pumpkin Spice.

John had never been much of an autumn person, as its gentle chills reminded him of the freezing times to come. The winter, to him at least, was the bleakest time of year. The sun set at 4:00 sharp, mornings felt disastrously long, and the snow turned into brown sludge that clung to your boots and the hems of your jeans. While everyone was setting up for Halloween or pre-gaming Thanksgiving, John was dreading the 5+ months of winter that were to come.

Inside the concrete parking garage, John unlocked his car. It was blue Toyota Sienna that had belonged to his dad before he got a new car in July, right before John left for college, and it still smelled like home even now. John claimed the driver’s seat and Rose claimed the passenger’s seat, leaving Jade and Dave to sit in the back. When John started the car, faint music started playing, but he switched it off.

“Man, turn the music on,” Dave pleaded, leaning forward against his seatbelt. John simply ignored him.

“Hey, Rose, do you know the directions to this place?” John asked.

“No, sorry,” she answered. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, although the left one was shaking, and she was nervously tapping her foot.

“I’ll plug in the directions,” Dave answered, and then they were off.

The packy (or liquor store, or whatever the hell you call it) wasn’t too far away, and they figured that Rose looked the oldest, so they sent her in with her fake ID, $30, and waited on bated breath for her arrival. She returned with a 12-pack of Bud Light and a bottle of wine five minutes later.

“Dude, why did you get wine?” Dave asked. “Who’s gonna drink wine at a party?”

“This is for _me,_ David,” Rose explained as she broke the plastic sealer and used a key to pull out the cork. She took a swig of it as John pulled out of the packy parking lot before turning back and offering Dave and Jade beers.

“I’m trying to keep my wits sharp,” Dave explained. “I’ll drink when I’m there. First, I have to put the moves on that girl.”

“ _Fucking hell,_ you sound like a sex offender,” Rose laughed. “Do you know how to talk to girls?”

“Do _you_?” Dave retorted.

“At least I am one, so I can tell you a thing or two,” Rose answered. “Number one. Don’t say shit like that.”

“Don’t get her a drink unless she’s with you, she won’t drink it,” Jade added.

“What? Why?” Dave questioned.

“Guys sometimes roofie girl’s drinks,” Rose explained. “If you _really_ want to get her something, invite her to go to a café and get her a cappuccino instead.”

“Bro, I don’t have time for that shit,” Dave groaned. “I’m really not looking for anything serious, and she’ll _absolutely_ think it’s serious if I get her a cappuccino. It’s like the pinot noir of caffeinated beverages.”

“So, you’re just going to this party because you want to _sleep_ with this girl?” Rose asked. “It’s real fuckboy hours around her isn’t it?”

“Dave, can you not? She’s in my Latin class,” John added.

“We won’t be able to eat at that diner anymore if you do this, Dave, you know that?” Jade complained.

“Oh, _come on,_ you guys act like you’ve never had casual sex before,” Dave said.

“FUCKING HELL, DAVID!” Rose yelled.

John felt himself cringe internally.

“Sex is cool, but have you tried not ruining your relationships with random young women you’ve just met because you’re insecure about yourself?” Jade told him.

That was around the time when John realized the night was about to go very, _very_ wrong.

The rest of the drive was uncomfortably silent apart from a few whispers between Jade and Rose. Dave was on his phone and lying down, as he reclined the seat as far back as it could go fairly early in the ride. Every once in a while, he would laugh at something, but John didn’t stop to ask what.

“You have arrived,” Siri said from Dave’s phone as John pulling into the parking lot. He turned off the car and pushed open the door, grabbing the 12 pack of beer that Rose had placed on the ground.

“Hey, Rose,” John began as he opened the door that led into the lobby. “Are you doing okay? You seem anxious.”

“I’m great,” she answered, taking a big sip from her wine bottle. “What makes you think I’m anxious?”

John didn’t answer.

It was just the four of them in an elevator at first, and the silence was quite awkward. It wasn’t until they reached the fourth floor and a guy got on that John and Rose started talking again.

 

The first thing Dave noticed about the guy was that he was short. Not, like, super short, but shorter than Dave. He was a Troll, and his horns were noticeably smaller than any of the other ones Dave had seen. This guy was wearing grey sweatpants and a black sweatshirt to a damn party, presumably, and for some reason thought it was a good choice to wear _fucking sandals_ instead of real shoes.

“What the fuck are you looking at, blondie?” The guy asked, looking back at Dave with piercing red eyes that saw right through his confident façade. When Dave said nothing, the guy said, “that’s what I thought.”

They hadn’t even known one another for two minutes, and Dave was already having ass-kicking fantasies about this guy. He was thinking about what he _should’ve said,_ like, “the level of unfuckability you’ve achieved is astounding” or “what’s there to look at?” but he didn’t.

 _He’s not worth it,_ Dave told himself, but he really just didn’t want to get into it with this guy. Anyone _that_ aggro clearly wasn’t worth the energy.

The elevator stopped at the ninth floor, and everyone got out, starting with the Troll guy, who left in quite a hurry. Dave considered yelling, “fuck you” after him but decided against that shit.

Dave could hear the music from the end of the hall. Rose was speed-walking, because that was what lesbians did, while drinking from her wine bottle, and was the first to get to the door. She knocked, and the door was promptly opened by a Troll girl with glasses and long, black hair that was tied into the world’s messiest bun.

“ARADIA!” She yelled into the apartment. “DID YOU INVITE THE FUCKIN’ SCOOBY GANG?”

Aradia walked up next to the girl and peered out the door, eyeing the group for just a moment. “Yeah, they’re fine.”

The girl narrowed her eyes and backed away from the door as if she were a bouncer. “Don’t start any shit, alright?” She said. Just as she was about to turn away, Rose spoke up out of nowhere.

“Oh, uh, hi Vriska,” Rose stammered. “Is, um, is Kanaya here? With you guys? If not that’s okay.”

“Huh? Oh, she’s on the roof. There’s a pool up there, or some shit,” Vriska explained. “Why?”

“Huh?” Rose turned bright red. “Oh! I, _well,_ I just wanted to, maybe… I have to return her textbook. That she let me borrow.” She explained. “Last week.”

“Where’s the textbook?” Vriska asked, looking Rose over.

Rose said nothing for a good ten seconds before responding, “uhuh, yeah,” and walking away. Vriska just rolled her eyes and walked away in response.

As the three of them entered, Terezi immediately took hold of John, and so their trio became a duo. Dave and Jade were left in a sea of drunk students rapping sloppily along to Sicko Mode, but quickly the duo was disbanded.

Dave approached Aradia, who was making herself a margarita, and the two began a conversation that Jade knew would last for quite some time.

 

“Top floor… Top floor… Top floor…” Rose muttered to herself as she pressed the button labeled “roof” and felt the elevator begin ascending. She hopped up and down twice, waiting nervously for the machine to ding. When it finally did, she found herself in a small concrete hallway with a short flight of stairs and a door at the end.

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she opened the door.

Two Trolls, a young man and a young woman, were in the pool leaning against the rim and talking, while everyone else pretty much minded their own business around the deck. Rose buried her hands in the sleeves of her sweater, looking around and watching people laugh and hang out with drinks and miscellaneous snacks in their hands.

Then she saw her.

Just lying there on a lounge chair wearing a one-piece black bathing suit with the sides cut out. She was reading a fashion magazine and using one of her legs as the stand, keeping her foot firmly planted on the chair for support. God, she looked so amazing, just sitting there like no one else existed in this apartment complex but her.

 _Just go talk to her, you idiot,_ Rose thought as she stood there like a fish out of water. _It shouldn’t be this hard._

Rose took a step forward, her hands shaking. She was holding her book under her arm but knew she had nowhere to read it.

_This was such a bad idea._

“Oh,” someone said all of a sudden, but it wasn’t Kanaya. “You’re John’s friend, right?” The girl in the pool asked. Kanaya looked up from her magazine.

“Huh?” Rose stammered. “Yeah.”

The guy next to her looked so annoyed.

“Do you know if he’s in Aradia’s apartment with Terezi? I’ve been meaning to ask her something, and I know they’re friends.”

“I don’t know, I left before I could see anything,” Rose confessed.

“It’s alright,” the girl said, suddenly standing up and pulling herself out of the pool.

“Fef-” The boy began, looking quite disheartened.

“I’ll be right back, Eridan, I promise,” she answered, scurrying quickly to the door. “It’s important.”

Eridan, or whatever his name was, rolled his eyes and fell back into the water, sinking beneath the gentle waves he had created and stayed down there for a strangely long time.

 _This is your chance,_ Rose told herself. “Is he… Alright down there?” Rose asked, her chest burning as if it were on fire.

“Oh, him?” Kanaya answered, closing her magazine and sitting up from her lounge chair. “He’ll be fine.”

_Keep it together._

“It’s, uh,” Rose began. “Funny seeing you here.”

“Yes, I’d say so,” Kanaya answered with a slight laugh. “Are you alright after your fall?”

Rose felt her ears burn bright pomegranate pink. “Yeah, I’m fine. It happens to me all the time.” _Why the fuck did I say that?_

“Are you… Drinking a bottle of wine?” Kanaya questioned, and for a second Rose though, _am I?_

“Kind of, yeah,” Rose answered with an awkward chuckle. She took a small drink from the bottle and staggered back a little bit. “You can have some if you-”

_SPLASH._

“Are you alone here, too?” A Troll boy with a floppy mohawk and horns that stretched out horizontally rather than vertically asked Jade as she sat down on the grey couch next to the window.

“I came with a few friends, but they kind of went their own ways,” Jade explained. “Have you been alone here all this time?”

“Well, I came with my friend, but he left to do bong hits in the trash room down the hall,” the boy explained. He had a red handheld gaming device in his hands, which Jade leaned over to look at. “I’ve literally just been playing Animal Crossing this whole time.”

“That’s certainly a whole mood,” Jade responded.

“Why’d your friends ditch you?” The kid asked as he played the fishing mini-game.

“I don’t think I’m cool enough,” Jade told him, and she knew it. “Why aren’t you, uh, hitting the bong with your friend?”

“Oh, I don’t really do drugs. I’m just not into that whole thing,” he explained. “I know, I’m such a loser. It’s just not really my schtick.”

“Man, that’s fine,” Jade responded. “I smoked a blunt once, and my friend had to take me to the ER because I thought I was having a heart attack.”

“ _Ohhh, that sucks_ ,” he answered, and for a while, Jade really thought the party was going well.

 

“FUCK!” Vriska slapped the Mario Kart steering wheel controller with her hand as Bowser spun around on the screen on his tricycle after hitting a banana peel. “Are you _SERIOUS_ right now?”

Terezi was losing her shit laughing as Vriska tried to get her bearings again and get back to where she was. “MOTHER _FUCKER!_ ” Vriska drove her tricycle off the edge.

Vriska, Terezi, John, and Sollux Captor were sitting on one of the couches playing an extremely ugly game of Mario Kart, in which it was every man for himself. John, playing as Daisy like he always did, stayed mostly out of trouble and didn’t throw any peels or blue shells. Terezi, on the other hand, was all about that life and went all-out with the powerups and throwables.

“How do you do this shit?” Vriska demanded.

“Get good,” Terezi answered as a blue turtle shell spun around her avatar.

Suddenly, the girl with all the necklaces sat down right next to Sollux in a soaking wet bathing suit and began taking pictures on her phone. “Do you guys mind if I sit here?” She asked politely.

“Just don’t drip everywhere,” Vriska told her without looking. “ _WHO THREW THAT_ _FUCKING SHELL, I SWEAR TO GOD I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU._ ”

“You’ll never be a pro-Mario Karter,” Terezi told her.

“Where are you getting all these fucking shells?” Vriska asked, breathless.

 

“ _Dave,_ ” Aradia muttered between rushed, sloppy kisses, just loud enough to get his attention.

“Yeah?” Dave responded. “Do you want me to stop?”

The two of them were standing beside a neatly made bed, just close enough that Aradia’s heals were touching one of the legs. By this point, Dave had taken off one shoe and unbuckled his belt. The location of the shoe remained a mystery, and if honesty truly is the best policy, then Dave would have to confess that he couldn’t stop thinking about where the damn thing went.

But that was beside the point.

“No, I’m good,” Aradia answered. “But, like… Don’t you think this is a bit weird?”

Dave paused. “What do you mean?”

“We don’t know each other that well,” Aradia answered, wrapping her arms around Dave’s shoulders. “I didn’t invite you here to just, like, _you know_.”

“We don’t have to do anything,” Dave told her. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, or something.”

“It’s totally not you,” Aradia told him. “I think you’re great, I just don’t usually… Do this on first dates.”

“So, this is a date?” Dave joked.

Without any kind of warning, there was a loud, banging knock on the door.

“ _What_?” Aradia called out.

“ _THERE’S A GUY AT THE DOOR ASKING FOR SOMEONE NAMED ‘DAMARA,’ WHAT DO I TELL HIM?_ ” Vriska yelled at the top of her lungs from outside the bedroom.

“Oh,” Aradia muttered, sounding suddenly grave. “ _Oh._ ”

“ _WANT ME TO TELL HIM TO FUCK OFF?_ ” Vriska yelled back.

Aradia released Dave from her grasp and started muttering things under her breath that didn’t make any sense.

“Hey, are you alright?” Dave asked. “If I freaked you out, I’m so sorry.”

“No, _no_ , it’s not you,” Aradia responded, pacing around the room looking for something. “Vriska, can you kill the music?”

“Yeah, sure,” Vriska responded in a normal-volume voice. “ _HEY, TURN OFF THE FUCKING MUSIC!_ ”

Aradia suddenly gasped and grabbed a gold key from on top of a pile of clothes before slamming the door open and running out into the living room.

 

Aradia was gone for ten minutes. Dave kept track. No one really talked while she was gone, and everyone seemed to get the idea that something had finally gone wrong. There were whispers from around the apartment that the cops were here, or that her sister had shown up, or that Aradia was in some kind of trouble.

But, when she finally came back, she was holding a baby carrier and holding a canvas bag over her shoulder. “Party’s over,” she said. “You guys can let yourselves out.” 


	6. Under the Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave gets into a fight. John lives life on the goddamn edge. Rose has romance issues. Jade has to contain the high-stakes emotions of her friend group. Terezi eats Hot Cheetos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 6!! Quick warning: This chapter contains a vivid depiction of a panic attack, so if that may cause you distress, I advice you to maybe take a pass on this chapter and skip to the next one when it comes out. I also encountered some technical difficulties while formatting the pesterlogs, so feel free to let me know in the comments if anything got screwed up.
> 
> Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated! :)

Everyone just looked at each other for a second as Aradia, disgruntled and frustrated, pushed past the individuals who were standing between her and the bedroom. Dave was standing right outside the doorway, with his belt still undone and one shoe missing, and Aradia walked right past him.

“Hey, are you-”

“I’m fine,” Aradia answered before he could finish, entering the bedroom and placing the baby carrier on top of the mattress. A small, grey hand reached out, as if to grab the air. “I’ll text you later.”

“What’s wrong?” Dave asked, taking a few steps into the darkened room. “Is that kid…”

“Dave, I’m really going to need you to leave,” Aradia turned to face him, her brow furrowed and her lips pursed. “I swear I’ll text you later.”

Dave said nothing in response.

Aradia, seeming quite irritated, quickly entered the living room and began trying to escort everyone out.

“Vriska, can you help me clean up?” Aradia asked. Dave knelt down and reached under the bed, feeling around on the grey carpet for anything vaguely sneaker-like. When he finally found his shoe, he could hear people in the hallway causing quite a commotion.

“I’m _sorry,_ ” Aradia said to the irritated crowd of kids. “You all need to leave.”

Dave pulled the red shoe over his foot and sloppily tied it, leaving one lace much longer than the other. He walked through the condensed group of people, shoving past both a young man and a young woman, pushing himself into an opening in the crowd in which Aradia stood in the center.

“We just _got_ here!” The man Dave shoved said in complaint. Many grunted in agreement.

“I’m _so, so sorry,_ something came up and… Please, just go,” Aradia choked out, as if she were about to cry.

“I’m so done with this shit, man, _fuck you,_ ” that guy with the cup spat, obviously intoxicated. He nearly stumbled over Dave’s left foot as he pushed the girl next to him away, all while the alcohol in his cup began sloshing out. “I knew I should’a just stayed home.”

Falling forward, the guy pushed Dave’s back into the table behind him, reaching around through the air like an infant child. “Dude, _chill,_ ” Dave told him in response.

“ _Fuck you,_ ” the guy answered, messily flipping Dave off with his ring-finger instead of the middle one. “Go suck your girlfriend’s tentacle dick or whatever they fuck she’s got going on down there.”

Without thinking, Dave grabbed the collar of the guy’s Lil Uzi Vert t-shirt and

The other guy was too inebriated to put up much of a fight. He threw a few punches and tried to kick Dave in the groin, but none of his attempts to do so were successful.

The thing about the Strider-Lalonde kids— all of them, not just Dave — was they were abnormally difficult to provoke. Dave rarely got genuinely angry, same with Rose, but it was bad news whenever they did. Oddly enough, it was more likely for Rose to be the one that would get physical. It had happened before, and if Dave remembered correctly, it was a complete disaster for everyone involved. Girl fights always were.

This was different, though. Even as it was happening, Dave didn’t know why he got so angry. He just kept hitting this guy over and over and _over_ again, until his nose became bloody and crooked and his eyes were almost swollen shut.

The guy was covered in bright red marks that would later turn to a hundred shades of purple and blue, breathing like an asthmatic and grasping at Dave’s sleeve as he held his collar. Dave raised his arm once more, preparing to hit the guy one last time.

“Dave _stop!_ ” Someone yelled, grabbing Dave’s right arm and yanked it back. At first, Dave thought it was Aradia. She didn’t seem like the type that would encourage violence. But it wasn’t.

Jade put herself between Dave and the drunk kid, holding her arms against their chests to keep them apart. “That’s _enough._ ”

Her glasses had clouded up a bit as if she were going to cry. Dave looked around, trying to spot John or Rose, but could only see the horrified look on Aradia’s face and the sight of Vriska’s girlfriend eating Hot Cheetos with a fork beside her.

Dave took a step back.

“Let’s just… Go home,” Jade whispered to him.

“ _ALRIGHT!_ ” Vriska yelled, and as a result, her girlfriend dropped her Cheetos. “ _EVERYBODY GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE._ ” For a second, no one moved. “ _YOU HEARD ME, ASSHOLES. I’M COUNTING TO TEN. ONE—”_

It was only then that people started scurrying out, shoving past others to get through the door. Jade was pushing Dave by the shoulder through the crowd as if he were a misbehaving child being escorted out of a Chuck E. Cheese. By this time, people seemed to have gotten the point, and Vriska ceased her counting.

Jade pulled Dave into the hallway opposite to the stairs and elevators, away from the crowd of drunken college students pouring out of the apartment.

“What was that?” Jade demanded in a hushed tone, although that no one could have heard her over the irritated chatter coming from everyone else.

“Guys, _where the hell is Rose_?”

“ _SHIT, SHIT, SHIT, SHIT,_ ” came a voice from down the hall, as if on que. “ _GO, GET IN THE ELEVATOR. GO, GO, GO._ ”

Rose ran down the hall sopping wet and dripping, holding her boots in her hands. “Get in the fucking elevator!”

Dave wasted no time. He pressed the grey button on the elevator panel as Rose trudged down the carpeted hall, her socks squishing as she moved. Her makeup had smudged across her face and her hair had lost its straightness, falling in its natural blonde ringlet curls.

“What happened?” Jade asked sympathetically, placing her hands on Rose’s shoulders as she walked up to her.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rose answered.

“Why are you so wet—” John began before being interrupted by loud crunching.

“I need a ride,” Terezi told him, stabbing into her Cheeto bag with her fork. “Vriska’s staying back to help clean up.”

“Didn’t you come here with Kanaya?” John asked.

“Yeah, I texted her,” Terezi answered. “She’s staying back to help with the little shit.”

“The _what_?” Rose questioned, rubbing her own arms to create some heat friction.

“The grub,” Terezi explained. “Weren’t you there for that whole situation?”

 Just as Rose was about to explain where she had been, the sound of heeled sandals going from stone stairs to carpet caught her attention. Wrapped around Kanaya’s waist was a red towel left slightly open just to expose her left thigh, making Rose’s already flushed face turn even an even brighter shade of red.

“ _Get in the goddamn elevator, get in,_ ” Rose whispered, pushing Dave into the opening doors. John and Terezi came after him, followed by Rose and Jade. Dave slammed his finger down on the _L_ button on the panel, desperately hoping _L_ meant lobby.

Jade pulled her jacket off and placed it over Rose’s shivering shoulders, whispering quiet phrases to her that Dave couldn’t hear. Rose just mumbled in response, sniffling slightly and making a slight squeaking noise in attempt to keep herself from sobbing.

“Are you… Okay?” Terezi asked. Rose, in response, began to sob violently into her hands as Jade brought her into her arms.

“Let it out, dude,” Jade whispered to her. “ _It’s okay_.”

“ _Why am I such an idiot_?” Rose sobbed against Jade’s chest.

The elevator dinged.

“You’re not an idiot, Rose, you’re just _drunk_ ,” Jade consoled her, leading her out into the lobby with an arm around her.

Dave stayed inordinately quiet as Rose cried, Jade consoled her, John talked with Terezi, and Terezi ate Cheetos. He didn’t say word, even as his sister sobbed incoherently, and walked behind the group rather than next to it. He wasn’t sure if John knew what had happened, but he figured Terezi would tell him as soon as she got the chance.

A part of Dave wished he hadn’t stopped hitting that guy. He could have just kept going, going, going, and if it hadn’t been for Jade, he thought he would have.

Jade hadn’t even spared him a glance since the fight. Not even in the elevator. He figured that he’d just text her later and apologize, same with everyone else. In his heart of hearts, Dave knew that a text wouldn’t be enough to fix things with Jade.

It had gotten much cooler outside. Dave checked his phone, and upon seeing it was nearly midnight, he shivered.

“I’ll drive,” Jade said.

“No, it’s fine, I’ve got it,” Dave tried to say. Maybe _that_ would fix things.

“No, you’ve been drinking,” Jade answered without meeting his eyes with her own.

“I can drive if you want to sit back with Rose,” John told her softly.

“ _John_ ,” Jade snapped, holding Rose in her arms. “You know I don’t drink. I don’t know what you guys have or _haven’t_ done tonight, and I’m not going to end the night with all of us dying in a car crash.”

“That might be nice,” Dave tried to joke.

“ _DAVE_!” Jade scolded him, finally looking back. Her dark brown eyes flashed with disdain in such a way that Dave thought he would crumble. Her dark brown cheeks had become splotched with light pink, as though she would cry. Dave knew, though, that the pink hue appearing on her skin was not from sadness. It was from hate, and that was something Dave never expected to see from Jade.

All of the sudden, Dave’s pale face grew even paler, and the blood inside his body seemed to drain.

John handed Jade the car keys, and she quickly unlocked the car. “Rose, you should sit in the passenger seat.”

Jade helped Rose into her seat and made sure she had buckled herself in as if she were a child. John opened the door for Terezi (such a gentleman) and she climbed in, nearly spilling her Cheetos as she did. She sat in the chair on the right and John sat beside her. Dave went to the very back and sat completely alone.

 

GC: H3Y 

John looked at Terezi, who was on her phone with a slight smirk across her lips.

EB: you can just talk to me you know

GC: 1 WOULD BUT 1 W4NT TO 4SK YOU 4BOUT D4V3 

John paused.

EB: what about him?

EB: yes he’s single

EB: please don’t date him

GC: OH GOD NO H3 LOOKS L1KE 4 FUCKBOY

EB: a very astute observation on your part

EB: what if he wasn’t a fuckboy?

EB: are you a lesbian?

GC: JUST B3C4US3 H4V3 G1RLFR13ND TH4T M4K3S M3 4 L3SB14N? 

EB: so you’re bi?

EB: never mind

EB: what did you want to know about dave?

GC: H3 W3NT B4TSH1T CR4ZY 4T TH3 P4RTY, D1DN’T YOU S33?

GC: 1S H3 4LW4YS L1K3 TH4T 4T P4RT13S?

Dave was shaking as he held the cellphone in his hands. Over and over again, he tried to text Aradia, to no avail. He didn’t even know why he cared so much.

TG: aradia im sorry about tonight

TG: ill make it up to you

TG: i don’t know whats going on but if you need help im here

TG: is that guy okay after i hit him?

TG: you wont get in trouble for that, right?

TG: fuck im sorry

TG: yo just to clarify, even if that kid is yours, it doesnt matter to me

TG: everyone has their own thing

TG: if that’s your thing i don’t mind

TG: i really like you aradia

TG: i only came to that party to be with you

TG: i mean not like that but

TG: you get the point

TG: im so sorry about this whole thing

TG: it’s all my fault

 

He hadn’t noticed it at the time, but his knuckles were covered in blood. He wasn’t entirely sure if they were his or the other guy’s, and he wasn’t sure if he cared. They absolutely _killed,_ stinging like his knees used to whenever he fell off his skateboard onto the asphalt, like they were about to bruise.

His knees shook as he stared at the ground, tapping his foot rhythmically to an unknown beat. The words of strangers flew about inside his head, whispering obscenities in his into his ear in attempt to dismay him.

 _I know what you are,_ the voice said. _You’re just like your father._

Dave didn’t know it until then, but he was breathing like an absolute madman. His chest heaved and his throat clenched as though his lungs had been set ablaze, and it was driving him into insanity. He had been to this place before, in which everything around him turned to dust and he became but a pitiful creature roaming a landscape of sorrow and despair. He had been here countless times, more than he cared to admit, and it never got easier.

He wanted to throw himself out of the car or hold his breath until he passed out. The shaking, the shame, the smell of blood… All of it was too much for his senses to handle at once.

At that point, the car had already stopped, and Dave couldn’t get out fast enough. He unbuckled himself and pushed past John, opening the door manually and climbing out. Jade had already done the same and circled back to be with Rose.

Nothing around him made any sense. He could hear the faint coos that Jade was humming to Rose, and saw the headlights of various other cars moving into the parking garage, but it all felt incorrect and out of place.

He needed to get out of there. It was all he could think about. If he didn’t, something inside him told him it would be his death. He could feel his bones shifting in his skin, poking and prodding at the muscles within the confines of his flesh. As he walked away, it felt like insects were crawling under his skin.

“Dave?” A voice called from the car. “Dave, are you okay?”

He knew it was John, but didn’t say anything to answer him.

He just went on.

 

Jade walked with Rose to their dorm slowly and close together. Jade kept her arm around Rose’s shaking shoulders just to stabilize her, pulling her along even though her feet dragged behind her.

“You can tell me all about what happened tomorrow, if you want,” Jade told her. “It’ll be okay.”

“ _No, it won’t,_ ” Rose sniffed in response. “ _It won’t_.”

 

John didn’t see where Dave went. He assumed that he had gone back to his dorm, but didn’t intend to find out until later. John was now walking through campus with Terezi by his side, serving as an escort to her own dorm.

“Hey,” she said, halting all of a sudden and waiting for John to turn around. When he finally did, he immediately noticed the look of mischief in Terezi’s crimson red eyes. “I have an idea.”

“Oh no,” John groaned, expecting it to be something insane.

“Tonight was a fucking mess,” Terezi commented. “And I know you only came to that party because of me.”

John froze. “I-”

“What if I make it up to you?” She added.

“What do you mean? It’s past midnight,” John pointed out.

“Arby’s,” Terezi answered. “It’s still open. I promise." 


	7. Can't Tell Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Terezi take a trip to their local 'all-night' Arby's and discuss a plethora of strange topics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, sorry the chapter is late. Just a brief warning before you get started: There is some mention of pedophilia/child sexual assault in this chapter, but in relation to those child-safety programs taught at grade schools. This program is discussed in a joking manner in a way similar to John Mulaney's 'Street Smarts' bit, and the description of this program is based on my own experience being taught by them as a young kid in a very academically sub-par elementary school where this was, like, the only thing I learned. If the mention of pedophilia or child sexual assault is a trigger for you, please feel free to skip this chapter. 
> 
> I genuinely cannot tell time because my school never taught me this. That isn't just a goof in the fic.

“Are you okay to drive?” Terezi asked.

John nodded. “Yeah,” he answered. “I didn’t drink anything except, like, some coke. Jade was just frustrated, I think, and wanted to get home.”

“Cocaine?” Terezi responded. “I didn’t know you could drink that.”

John blinked. “What? No, I mean _Coca Cola_ ,” He explained. “The soft drink.”

This was the third time tonight John walked through the concrete parking garage and by this time, no one else was there. No humans nor Trolls hung out around here, despite how quiet and dark it was.

The latter species was primarily nocturnal and, form what John could only guess was an evolutionary trait, extremely photosensitive. Whenever John was out a little too late or was walking home from a midnight class, he always saw a group or two of Troll kids wandering around in the dark, chatting and sitting on fences. Sometimes he saw that guy from the elevator, with the nubby horns and messy dark hair, with Gamzee Makara seated on the bench near the library during some ungodly hour, and they always seemed like they were waiting for someone to show up.

John never waited to see who.

For the second time tonight, John was driving. When he turned on the car, he rolled down the windows to let the cool October air filter into the alcohol-scented interior, allowing John to finally take a deep breath without wanted to hurl.

Terezi was on her phone at the moment messaging someone whose text was cerulean blue, which John noticed was the same shade as the hoodie she had stolen from her girlfriend that night.

“Everything okay?” John asked her as the car rolled out of the parking garage.

“Yeah,” Terezi answered. “Vriska stayed back to help clean up. Aradia seemed pretty upset.”

John sighed, driving past one of the science buildings and the football field. “Any word on what happened?”

Terezi shrugged. “She didn’t say,” she answered. “All she told Vriska was that the guy at the door was someone her sister knew.”

“Perks of being an only child,” John laughed as he turned the radio on. “You never have to deal with your sibling’s friends.”

“Is that the only perk?” Terezi asked, shutting off her phone and burying it in the pocket of her sweatshirt. “What about not having to share a bathroom? Or not being compared to anyone else?”

“I compared myself to others, anyway,” John confessed, and immediately regretted it. He had that problem sometimes, where he overestimated the intimacy of a friendship and ended up saying something crazy right out of the blue. He and Terezi were probably still in that phase of the friendship where they both saw one another as ‘perfect’ or ‘normal,’ and John feared that, with his previous comment, he ruined the illusion of being either or both of those things.

Nonetheless, Terezi answered, “you shouldn’t.”

“Easy for you to say,” John responded with a slight although awkward laugh. “You’re in law school. You’re already better than everyone.”

“Is that honestly what you think?” Terezi said, and John’s heart pounded as he awaited her next sentence. Had he offended her? Did he screw everything up, like the idiot he was? “I’m from an entire subspecies of legal practitioners who have been learning law for years, and I’m over here getting most of my information from reruns of _Judge Judy._ ”

“Sure, but you’re still really good at that kind of stuff, right?” John said.

“Maybe, by your standards,” Terezi responded. “But to everyone else, I’m barely more than a disappointment.”

 

The road ahead of them was dark and empty, as if everyone in western Massachusetts had been abducted by aliens or something. Even when John drove through town, everything seemed empty. No one was walking around or staggering through the streets, and the only other car on the road was a black Subaru with a disgruntled woman driving and a young kid next to her playing video games on a Switch.

“Where are you from, anyways?” John asked. “Wait, let me guess… New York.”

“Yeah,” Terezi confirmed. “How’d you know? I don’t have an accent.”

“You do, though,” John explained. “So do I. It only comes out when you’re excited, though, and it’s kinda like an inflexion on specific words or phrases.”

“Like what?” She asked.

“You drop your H’s and your R’s sometimes,” John explained.

“What, are you some kind of linguist?” Terezi asked sarcastically.

“No, I just spend a lot of time listening to other people’s voices,” he told her, immediately feeling creepy about it after. “Not in a weird way, though. I mean, not really.” He tried to say. “I just listen to the people around me talking and having conversations instead of adding to them.”

Terezi scoffed and nearly snorted, sinking down into the passenger seat and grabbing John’s arm. “God, that’s… That’s so sad,” Terezi laughed. “You just, like, sit there? And listen to people?”

John was half-smiling. “Yeah.”

“Even with your friends?” Terezi asked him again.

The car came to a stoplight. “Yeah,” John answered quietly with a half-chuckle, furrowing his brow for a second as he spoke.

“Why do you spend all that time listening to the way other people speak when you could be speaking to them yourself?” Terezi wondered aloud. “That must get lonely.”

John ran his right hand through his jet-black hair, ruffling it slightly and then smoothing it back down. He checked the time on the dashboard of the car, becoming uncomfortably aware of the sleep growing in his eyes. _1:49,_ the clock read, begging John silently to go to sleep. Finally, though, he was able to pull into the Arby’s parking lot, which was empty apart from a few other vehicles that John assumed belonged to the staff.

John and Terezi seated themselves at a booth near one of the windows, where they watched cars pass and night go on. No one came to offer either of them menus or water, and for a moment, John considered the idea that Terezi and him were literally breaking and entering.

“Are you sure we’re allowed to be here this late?” John asked. “Doesn’t this place close at eight? That’s when we left last time.”

Terezi ruffled her own hair with her fingers. “I know someone who works here.”

“Are they… Here?” John asked again.

“Yeah, probably,” Terezi answered. “He was at the party. I think he left early, anyway.”

“Did he leave early to keep an Arby’s open?” John laughed.

Terezi shrugged. John heard ceramic crashing and metal clattering in the background as she began describing her friend to see if he recalled them.

“ _FUCK!_ ” John heard from one of the back rooms. The kitchen door swung open without warning, revealing a thin, lanky Troll with four small horns atop his head rather than two. He looked rather stunned as well as tired, smoothing his hair over his head and sighing.

“Are you good?” Terezi called to him as she leaned over the booth. “What was all that noise?”

“Don’t mind me, I just dropped about fifty fucking plates,” the kid muttered as he approached the table. “Let me guess, two Ginger Ales and cold soup?”

“Fuck yeah, gamer man,” Terezi responded.

“Uh,” John stammered, fiddling with his thumbs. “I guess I’ll have whatever’s easiest and some water.”

“Does that mean you’d settle for, like, spray cheese and Ritz?” The guy asked. “Because with an answer like that, spray cheese and Ritz are what you’re getting.”

John shrugged. “Sure.”

“He’ll have some cereal with the milk in the bowl first and a slice of your boss’s divorce cake,” Terezi corrected him. “Oh, and get him a Coke.”

John didn’t know what to say. The waiter just smiled and walked off, coming back several minutes later with Coke, two Ginger Ales, a slice of vanilla sponge cake, extremely over-saturated Frosted Flakes in what seemed to be more of a thick plate than a bowl, and a cup of lumpy, orange soup with noodles vaguely shaped like the characters from _Cars 2._

He gladly took the cake, Coke, and cereal, but just sat there without eating anything for quite a while. “Thanks,” was all he could say.

Terezi placed the plastic cups of Ginger Ale at opposite sides of her mouth and leaned back, pouring them into her mouth at the same time. She slammed them both down as if she had just chugged something insane, and heaved a sigh in response. “Why are you—” Terezi burped in the middle of her sentence. “—So worried about what people think of you?”

“What?” John asked. “What do you mean?”

Terezi ate a spoonful of her cold soup. “You didn’t bother actually asking for something decent, like leftover divorce cake,” she explained. “You just went for what was easiest for Sollux.”

“To be fair, he seemed like he was having a hard night,” John answered.

“Aren’t we all?” Terezi reminded him. John felt his heart palpitate as he remembered the party, but not just that. For him, the party was actually quite enjoyable. He thought it would be a total shitshow full of drunken hipsters eating each other’s faces, which it kind of was, but John spent most of his time with Terezi and Vriska. The three of them did nothing but play Mario Kart for hours, laughing every time Terezi won and Vriska got last place, or when Vriska tried to grab the controller away from Terezi when she was trying to pick Rainbow Road as their course.

What John thought of was Dave and Rose, one bloody and panicking and the other inconsolable and embarrassed.

“That wasn’t even the worst party I’ve been to, let me say,” Terezi scoffed. “You think Dave’s fight was bad? One time, Gamzee got absolutely shitfaced and decided to pick a fight with this kid Equius, who, _and I shit you not,_ threw Gamzee through a fucking ping-pong table in retaliation.”

“ _What?_ ” John almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It felt good to just kind of laugh it off, even though a bit of anxiety still clung on when he remembered the hateful tears in Jade’s eyes as she looked at Dave and the blood on his pale fists.

“It’s only _October,_ when did this shit happen?” John asked.

Terezi thought for a second. “Fuck, I don’t know month math, how many days ago was September third?”

“ _Month math?_ ” John questioned.

“I can’t tell time, either,” Terezi confessed. “I heard someone say ‘it’s half-past three,’ and I still have no clue what that means. Like, I can look at a clock and read _four thirty-five,_ it’s just when you get into all that fancy shit that you lose me.”

“You never learned that in grade school?” John asked.

“What fucking grade school did _you_ go to? All we learned were our primary colors and how to spot the early warning signs of an encroaching pedophile.”

“That sounds like something out of that John Mulaney bit where he talks about the cowboy that came to his school and told him about _street smarts,_ ” John commented.

Terezi nodded. “Exactly. All we learned in elementary school was that when your hot cousin comes back from college and tries to get you to vape with him and his skater friends, you gotta nut-punch him.”

“Jesus, was that like, a unit in Health or something?” John asked.

“Nope. We never learned what sex was, either. I never once heard the words ‘penis in vagina,’ or anything like that. They taught us how to puncture a sex offender’s larynx with our own pinkie fingers, though,” Terezi responded.

John was taken aback by Terezi’s candid description of her school. He had to admit, some of what she said shocked him slightly, but explained a lot about who she was.

“Want to know what my two childhood aspirations were?” Terezi asked, awaiting a response, although she didn’t really need one in the end. “To become a penguin feeder and to lure pedophiles into a white van labeled ‘free Coors Lite inside.’”

John couldn’t help but laugh. He wasn’t sure if any of this was true or not, but it was just shocking enough to make John’s face turn red and his voice became hoarse.

“That’s fucking crazy,” John told her. “And so… Because of this, you can’t tell time?”

Terezi nodded. “Can’t tell time _at all._ ”

 

After hours of discussing child-safety programs and time-telling, John drove Terezi home in a sleep-fueled daze. Even she fell asleep in the passenger seat, leaning against the window with her phone still on. Angry cerulean text was still appearing on the screen, asking where she was and if she was safe. John considered waking her up so she could respond, but he let her be.

He only woke her up at the end of their journey, helping her into the dorm house, where Vriska was sitting on one of the couches. She seemed relieved to see that John was with her, although still rather frustrated with Terezi as the two walked off.

“You said you’d be back in an hour,” Vriska whispered to her half-conscious girlfriend.

“I can’t tell time,” Terezi answered, and John smiled just a little.


End file.
